Award winning director’s play wins hearts in Muscat

MUSCAT: Theatre lovers in Oman experienced a unique way of drama presentation at the Al Falaj Hotel. They witnessed a more challenging way of storytelling. For the first time in Muscat, a stage was specially erected at Grand Hall of Al Falaj with no curtains. Many realistic properties were used and also had some wellchoreographed dance sequences. Not the least, the central character of the play was an actual Tree kept at the center. The director had taken care to differentiate the play in every possible way.

Rainbow Muscat under the banner of Mazhavil Natyagriham organized the play “Adaykka” to a full capacity audience, directed by K.V. Manjulan, based on an awardwinning story of the same name written by Dr Rajgopal (Anesthetist, Khoula Hospital, Muscat). The theatre script for “Adaykka” was developed by Rohith Kozhoor, also a well-known scriptwriter from Kerala. The play, “Adaykka”, a theatre adaptation from Dr Rajgopal’s short story collection titled “Ezhu Theevandikal” exceeded the expectations of all who had been eagerly waiting for the premiere. It had garnered a huge following right from the auditions, which began in 1st week of September. Around 30 artistes were selected from Muscat for performing in this play. The selection was conducted earlier through a systematic audition process in Muscat.

True to the trademark Manjulan style of theatre, the play was enacted in a unique way creating an additional stage using realistic properties. The lighting effects, supervised directly by Mr Manjulan, was a visual galore and needs special mention. The audience had the best of experience and the reviews have come out with full rankings.

“Adaykka” has the honour of being directed by the award-winning director K.V. Manjulan, better known for plays like “Kelu” and “Embryo”, whose solo drama “Koonan” is inching towards its 2000th stage and is expected to enter the Guinness Book of Records soon. Manjulan had packed few surprises in the play to enthuse the spectators. Every scene was applauded and each dialogue cheered. The coordination of set change between scenes was impeccable and spot on. Particularly when there was no curtains, this was indeed challenging. Equally challenging was procuring and transporting the tree from Salalah. People who watched the entire play, mention that each character is still lingering in their minds. What struck chords with the audience is that the play “Adaykka”, describes the detachment of human from Mother Nature by the influence of technology and his thirst to return back to nature.

All the Actors participating in this drama were from Muscat. While Aji Haripad, Remya Denzil and Sudha Reghunath played the lead along with Dr Rajgopal and Geethu Ajay. The support cast were full of powerful actors, who have huge fan following in Muscat for their versatile performance in various leading plays. Sarat Palat, Anil Kadakkavoor, Lovel Balakrishnan, Binu Ennakkadu, Mathew Mezhuveli, Suneesh Sukumar, Sathyanath K Gopinath, Vimal Nair, and Sajitha Vijaykumar have left their mark in this play too with their signature performances. Actors like Harikrishnan Nair, Retheesh Rajamani, Satheesh Kumar, Shivani Sarat, Prasanth Bhaskaran, Kiran Hariprasad, Kalavathy Jayadasan, Minaru Joseph, Arun Krishna, Shinoona Siraj, Christy Antony, Hari Narayanan and Master Serafin V Mathew who have plenty of experience in various theatrical drama added splendour to the play and were a catalyst in taking the story forward. The drama also had a debutant in Master Adhrit Gautham.

Spokespersons from Rainbow Muscat, announced that this performance was dedicated to the Late Girija Baqer, who was well known to promote talents and art in Muscat.